2009.08.18 19:00 - Flourish, Middle, Edge

The Guardian for this meeting was Eos Amaterasu. The comments are by Eos Amaterasu.

Eos Amaterasu: Hi Doug!

--BELL--

doug Sosa: hi.

doug Sosa: i didn't type boo, don't know where that came from !

doug Sosa: ah, i was typing jestures fifteen minutes ago :)

Eos Amaterasu: Crashed

doug Sosa: hurry back.

doug Sosa: that was quick.

doug Sosa: hm.

Eos Amaterasu: lots of lag, but a little better now

Eos Amaterasu: Does the 9 secs have a life of its own?

doug Sosa: i ile your profile.

doug Sosa: hi pem

Eos Amaterasu: Hi Pema

Pema Pera: Hi Doug and Eos!

Eos Amaterasu: thnx Doug

doug Sosa: Storm has been standing outside twitching for over 24 hours. What's up?

Pema Pera: a ghost avatar -- he is not logged in

doug Sosa: Hmm, wonders exceed expectations :)

Pema Pera: Hi Paradise!

doug Sosa: i love the way you walk across the grass :)

Paradise Tennant: hiya pema doug eos :))

Eos Amaterasu: Hi Pari!

Paradise Tennant: :))

Paradise Tennant: how is everyone tonight ?

Eos Amaterasu: I like that: wonders exceed expectations

Pema Pera: enjoying life in Paradise, also known as California :)

doug Sosa: I am going to a late dinner with a coop here called magic. green for sustainabuility, etc.

Paradise Tennant: nice!

Pema Pera: Hi Dakini!

Dakini Rhode: hi :-)

doug Sosa: never met them except one, a civil engineer from one of the little pacific islands.

Eos Amaterasu: Soon to be in California for a few days... just picked up may son from camp - where he was left alone in the woods for a night :-)

Paradise Tennant: hello dakini ;)

Eos Amaterasu: HI Daki!

doug Sosa: :)

Pema Pera: I hope he is okay, Eos!

doug Sosa: Fiji.

Pema Pera: intentionally left alone?

Eos Amaterasu: Oh yes, he's fine!

doug Sosa: I saw the smile, good for son, good for parent.

Eos Amaterasu: Yes, part of a rite of passage sort of thing

Eos Amaterasu: being alone in the forest/wilderness is special, or can be

Paradise Tennant: :))

doug Sosa: Dakini, makes me think I wish i could do with my mind what you do with your skirt. Let it flow out and then seek down of its oen accord.

doug Sosa: own

Dakini Rhode: doug, what a sweet metaphor and wishing i could do the same with my mind :-)

Paradise Tennant: :)

Eos Amaterasu: being with flourish

Paradise Tennant: swish even :)

Eos Amaterasu: settling of its own

--BELL--

Pema Pera: :)

Dakini Rhode: in SL it's said the prim has a "flexible path", maybe our minds can take a flexible path also

Paradise Tennant: :)

doug Sosa: prim?

Paradise Tennant: our minds are maleable indeed

Dakini Rhode: ah the basic building blocks of construction in this world

Paradise Tennant: yes!

doug Sosa: and what are our flexible maleable minds doing now, he wonders?

doug Sosa: i can feel our collective 1000 horsepower minds going but we purr along like sleepy kittens

Dakini Rhode: haha

Paradise Tennant: yes

Eos Amaterasu: we're such good maleable makers that we identify with the fruits of our projections

doug Sosa: example?

Eos Amaterasu: these avatar bodies are a great example of that

Eos Amaterasu: but also our so-called RL minds, feelings, perceptions, bodies

doug Sosa: I've been wondering if people identify with their avatars,or treat them as costunmes and masks.

Dakini Rhode: lol yes, how often do we use the word "I" in reference to our avatars?

Paradise Tennant: yes thoughts positive and negative manifest in our physical world

doug Sosa: Do most want to be known through their avatar, or hide?

Eos Amaterasu: ?

doug Sosa: Is the avatar a "not" "or a "this is really me".

Dakini Rhode: doug, do you mean the avatar appearance, as you need an avatar as a vehicle in SL, can't be here without one

doug Sosa: i messed that last sentence. In the avatar we need to be here, do i construct it to hide who I am or to reveal who i am?

Paradise Tennant: we define our selves by our choices .. always an interesting study ..

Eos Amaterasu: I feel I am being, in all dimensionalities, through and in my avatar

Eos Amaterasu: just like I be in RL: I can talk of my body there

Paradise Tennant: blinks

Eos Amaterasu: A friend of mine says that in SL you meet people from the inside out

Paradise Tennant: ;)

Pema Pera: :-)

Eos Amaterasu: I am meeting Doug here :-)

doug Sosa: inside out?

Paradise Tennant: unconfined by their rl physical .. economic .. even emotional constraints ?

Eos Amaterasu: I think maybe after a while you might be able to say that - I don't know

Eos Amaterasu: (to Doug)

--BELL--

doug Sosa: we all weigh 250 poubds, dirt poor and broken hearted.. :)

Paradise Tennant: :) we all choose to bring our awarenss our prescence here .. to share our thoughts . our questions.. our wonder.. together .. that much .. I am sure is totally correct ..

Paradise Tennant: :)

Eos Amaterasu: we share the 90 secs

Eos Amaterasu: as well as 840 secs

doug Sosa: I once led a workshop, and we took the risk to talk about "what do we really believe, who are our gods, our cosmologies?" After the meeting as we were leaving..

doug Sosa: one of the participants said, "this is the best meeting we have ever had..

Eos Amaterasu: That's a good one

doug Sosa: "we know each other so much less well than when we came in!"

Paradise Tennant: so what do you really believe doug?

doug Sosa: That we always start in the middle, end in the midddle, all things are real, and being good to each other is important. I start there.

Paradise Tennant: lol nope some of us are edgy :))

Dakini Rhode: i'm not sure what is meant by the middle, doug

doug Sosa: we alwasy come in in the middle. we never catch a beginning. That is because beginnings are too small to notice, even for the best meditator.

Dakini Rhode: wondering if a good meditator is able to catch the middle

Paradise Tennant: and never the end ?

doug Sosa: By the end it is already well into the next beginning.

doug Sosa: the middle? i think it can be caught.

Eos Amaterasu: there are whole traditions of playing the middle, the middle way, and never catching the middle

Eos Amaterasu: but I hear Doug saying that we start out already "in the world", in being

doug Sosa: Yes. I think we need to ride waves we only partially understand, but we can exerience tham fully according to our nature.

Dakini Rhode: i think i understand better what you meant :-)

Paradise Tennant: still blinking

doug Sosa: The thing is, to not end up like the peson in jail who wants to spend time recalling what happened and has to say..

doug Sosa: i wish i had paid more attention so i could recall better."

doug Sosa: spend

Eos Amaterasu: paying attention now..... beginnnings are not just temporal....

Dakini Rhode: hey Don :-)

Pema Pera: Hi Donyod!

Eos Amaterasu: Hi Donyo, we sit here and talk about the nature of being

Eos Amaterasu: Ah!

Donyodgrubpa Magic: Hello

doug Sosa: and you are a wonderful example :)

Pema Pera: We get together a few times a day to chat about the nature of reality, and everything else, and we have a wiki http://playasbeing.wik.is/ -- We record our conversations there. Do you mind being included in our blogs,Donyodgrubpa?

Donyodgrubpa Magic: ok

Pema Pera: tnx!

--BELL--

Paradise Tennant: emotionally I think we can tune in the beginnings and ending.. the edges. our emotions are at times a more accurate filter ..

doug Sosa: if we look at experience don't beginnings have "before"s?

Paradise Tennant: depends on the experience no ?

Eos Amaterasu: we're as much in the big bang now as billions of years ago

Eos Amaterasu: experience can arise fresh

Eos Amaterasu: even if you've seen pink lotus flowers in fountains before :-)

doug Sosa: we could try one, but gad, I'll need to leave for my dinner in a few minutes :(

Pema Pera: :)

Pema Pera: try a big bang ?

doug Sosa: my reation to the new pink. Flamingoes, tiaras in circusus, it hides the peson on the other side (no one there now).. all are thee when the fountain begins.

doug Sosa: not fountain, pink.

Dakini Rhode: bubblegum and cherry blossoms

doug Sosa: the pink came from fael's imagineation before it was here, and her imagination, working with stuf that alread was "is", is a complex story.

doug Sosa: So where was the beginning, of it, of my experience?

Pema Pera: but if you interpret the "middle" as everything except the very edges, than more than 99% of everything is "middle" . . . .

Paradise Tennant: well .. kind goes hand in hand with connectedness .. really does it not ?

doug Sosa: or lots of middles all interconnected.

Donyodgrubpa Magic: edges come only from inside of each of us

Pema Pera: whereas in, say, Buddhism, the notion of "middle" is that of the best balance -- where less than 1% would qualify in any given situation as the best middle

Pema Pera: yes, Donyod, we judge and carve up :)

Dakini Rhode: doug what i see in your description is a complex web of interconnections without beginning or end

doug Sosa: could it be otherwise?

doug Sosa: I do need to go. This was desert. Thanks.

Paradise Tennant: waves good nite doug :)

doug Sosa: did i get enough s's in that? Not aterless expanse but end of meal delight.

Dakini Rhode: glad you had your dessert first :-)

Eos Amaterasu: have a good main course :-)!

Donyodgrubpa Magic: good sleep :) doug

Pema Pera: nite Doug!

--BELL--

Pema Pera: I like the quotes in your profile, Donyod, I presume the language is Tibetan?

Donyodgrubpa Magic: yes

Donyodgrubpa Magic: time to rest for me also, good night!

Pema Pera: good night!

Eos Amaterasu: Good night!

Paradise Tennant: good night donyod ..

Dakini Rhode: time for me as well...

Pema Pera: sweet dreams, Dakini

Dakini Rhode: thanks, Pema

Eos Amaterasu: Good night, DAki

Dakini Rhode: tc

Paradise Tennant: good night dakini

Paradise Tennant: well It is getting late on the east coast .. so I will say good night too as always thank you :)

Pema Pera: sleep well, Paradise!

Eos Amaterasu: 'night, Paradise!

Paradise Tennant: thanks pema .. enjoy california nite nite eos ::)

Pema Pera: I will -- and so will you, soon :)

Pema Pera: oops

Pema Pera: wrong text line -- I thought the last part was from you, Eos

Eos Amaterasu: Ah, yes, soon I will be 4 time zones away, or closer :-)

Pema Pera: when are you coming out?

Pema Pera: what day?

Eos Amaterasu: I'm flying out on Friday

Pema Pera: and where will you stay?

Eos Amaterasu: My brother lives in Berkeley, so will stay with him

Pema Pera: it would be nice to get together, if you have time, on Sat and/or Sun

Eos Amaterasu: And the Friday 28th my sister flies in from Wales, so will see her briefly

Pema Pera: we're going to organize a couple meals for everyone interested

Eos Amaterasu: Yes, that would be great

Pema Pera: in or near Berkeley

Pema Pera: stay tuned: we'll send out a note tomorrow probably

Eos Amaterasu: My brother's house is on Grizzly Peak Blvd :-)

Pema Pera: nice view!

Eos Amaterasu: Indeed, can see right out the Golden Gate bridge

Eos Amaterasu: I lived in Berkeley for a number of years - will be nice to visit

Pema Pera: I lived there for half a year, 25 years ago -- but since then have visited many times for a few weeks at a time, often almost every year

Pema Pera: it's a wonderful place

Eos Amaterasu: it always seemed like a kind of super genetic melting pot

Pema Pera: yes, and very free and open

Eos Amaterasu: just checked the weather - a bit cooler than here (but we're in a hot spell)

Pema Pera: :)

--BELL--

Pema Pera: Well, I'll get back to RL for a while -- and it must be late for you by now

Eos Amaterasu: Yes, I'll turn in, good night, Pema

Pema Pera: good night, Eos!